The United States and Japan will step up their defence cooperation to deal with the threat from nuclear-armed North Korea as tensions in East Asia remain high, officials from the two allies said on Thursday.

Victorian health minister reads mean tweets from anti-vaxxers

Victoria's health minister has exposed the virulence of the anti-vaccination movement by reading out a sample of the abuse and threats she regularly receives online.

Jill Hennessy says she is inundated with bile every time the state government seeks to increase vaccination rates by people who believe the life-saving practice is some kind of Big Pharma conspiracy to poison children.

In a video for The Herald Sun, Ms Hennessy reads out a selection of some of the anti-vaxxer's choicest cuts. There are calls to execute the "sickness minister", who is labelled a "lying f—tard shill", an "evil bitch", and a "criminal".

"You should get all the poison vaccines the child gets in one shot," one tweeted. "Hope you get cancer soon."

Ms Hennessy says she decided to highlight these attitudes in order to dispel the notion that anti-vaxxers are naïve children of the earth.

"People should be under no illusions: the anti-vaccination movement is not a group of peace-loving hippies, as some might assume. They are an organised group that peddle misinformation that is dangerous, and their advocacy techniques are unhelpful, abusive and downright rude," Ms Hennessy told the paper.

"There is a certain irony that people who purport to advocate on behalf of children’s wellbeing make threats of violence, threaten the wellbeing of vaccination advocates’ children, and use language which at its best is childish and at its worst constitutes harassment.